After completing your preflight checklist, you hop into your beautiful new DA40-180. Okay, it’s new to you anyway, and only yours part-time as a fractional owner. Having already been checked out in the plane, you’re excited to take a cross-country for a $100 hamburger.
“Clear!” Mixture full rich, set 1000 RPM, wonder what that awful racket is.
Your fellow owner, the last one to fly the airplane, had parked in an unfortunate tie-down spot, probably without realizing there was a lot of gravel around. That would have been nice to know, and had they performed even a cursory post-flight inspection, you could have avoided a pebble shower.
A post-flight inspection can increase safety and save a lot of inconvenience and money. It also breeds a professional mindset that reinforces best practices when flying.
Such an inspection should be, at the least, a visual check of your aircraft conducted after hopping out after the shutdown. Even the shutdown has room for improvement, as most shutdown checklists only step you through items designed to ensure you don’t drain your battery and your airplane doesn’t fly away in a windstorm.
Here are some checklist items you can incorporate into the end of each flight (when many pilots just walk back into the FBO).
Obvious damage
Give the leading edges of your lifting surfaces a look, and maybe a swipe with your hand. That’s a great opportunity to remove dead bugs as well. Look down the fuselage for wavy skin. If you had a hard landing, check the tires and struts…and probably the ELT as well.
Leaks
Check the ground for fresh spots of anything that shouldn’t be dripping from your airplane and for fluids along the sides of any surfaces near a natural opening (like the fuel caps). Look carefully for leaking brake fluid since it can easily hide behind the tires.
Parking spot
TAF
Yes, the weather forecast. It would be unfortunate for your parked airplane to experience a 40-knot quartering tailwind from a cold front you knew nothing about.
Typical pre-flight steps
It might take a little time, but just that small extra effort could allow you to discover an emerging problem you can address today rather than experiencing a delayed or scrubbed flight tomorrow.
Focused steps
If you just flew around the patch for half an hour, you likely don’t need to be as diligent about seeing how much oil you burned than if you just finished a four-hour cross-country on a hot day. Think about the nature of the flight you just took, including any oddities that may have occurred, and give a little extra attention to things that might have been affected.
Communicate
If anyone other than you flies the airplane (fractional ownership, rental, etc.), be sure to inform them of any potential problems you discovered, even if the issues do not require a placard. At worst, make your own placard stating the possible issue and a way to get in touch with you, and put it in an obvious place in the cockpit.
If it’s a rental, let the staff A&P know. Document any findings required by FARs.
Further, developing and writing down your own post-flight checklist can help make it a seamless part of your flow for each flight.
A colleague of mine had to scrub a training flight in a rental plane recently due to a shattered NAV beacon lens. The light was there and turned on but was no longer shining through a red lens, making it non-compliant.
Had the previous pilot taken just a moment to quickly inspect the airplane, a replacement lens could have been installed sooner, or my friend could have booked another airplane. Instead, he lost a few hours driving to the airport and then immediately back home.
It was only an issue of inconvenience, but it was avoidable with a post-flight inspection and would have been nice to know ahead of time. In other scenarios, the consequences can be more serious. Either way, it's worth a few extra minutes to set up the next flight for success, which can even be the first step in a virtuous cycle that improves the safety culture of a broader group of pilots.